Motor Mouth - Janet Evanovich [99]
I had so much leftover terror my teeth were chattering and I was shaking.
“D-d-do you think it will work?” I asked Hooker. “D-d-do you think they’ll connect Rodriguez and Lucca with the m-m-murders?”
Hooker had his arms locked around me. “There will be a lot of unanswered questions,” he said, “but I’m hoping we left the murder weapon in the kitchen. I don’t see where the police can dispute a murder weapon loaded with fingerprints.”
“Guess we know why they weren’t worried about leaving you behind,” Rosa said to Hooker. “They were going to blow you up.”
“That charge was left in the kitchen, next to the gas cooktop,” Hooker said. “I’m guessing it would have blown everything up and probably burned the place down.”
I woke up in the little bed in Felicia’s house. Beans was on the floor, still sound asleep. Hooker was on top of me, wide awake, his hand on my breast.
“Your hand is on my breast again,” I said.
“And?”
“You might want to move it lower.”
He slid his hand down a couple inches. “Here?”
“Lower.”
The hand went to just below my hip. “Here?”
“Yeah. Now a little to the right.”
“Darlin’!”
Okay, big surprise. I was going to succumb to his charms…again. And I’d probably regret it…again. But I wouldn’t regret it short term. Short term was going to be good. And who knows, maybe it would work out for us this time. And if it didn’t, I’d be smart enough to keep the key to the golf cart.
An hour later we were still in bed, and Hooker’s cell phone rang.
“I hear on the news that the police found the Huevo murder weapon in the possession of two dead suspects,” Skippy said. “It sounds like you’re off the hook. Are you planning on showing up here anytime soon?”
“Do I have to?”
“We had the parade of cars this morning and your stunt double did a burnout on Forty-second Street and took out Spanky’s car. Marty Smith got to him with a microphone before I could reach him, and it sounded like Marty was interviewing Loni Anderson. If you don’t want rumors going around concerning your sexual affiliation, I think you should get your ass to New York.”
“Did they say anything else about the dead suspects?” Hooker asked Skippy.
“They said the one guy had been chewed up by the swamp monster. Imagine that.”
EPILOGUE
It was sixty degrees and sunny, it was mid-January, and it was the first day of three days of preseason testing at Daytona. Hooker’d rented a beachside house for himself and his crew, and I was included. We’d all left the beach house at seven-thirty and driven to the speedway where his crew had unloaded both triple-two Metro cars from the hauler, then rolled them across the blacktop and into their side-by-side garage bays.
Both cars were flat gray, only adorned by their numbers. No need to decorate the car up with sponsor logos for testing. Only a handful of fans would find their way to the grandstand, and there’d be no television audience. This was a work session to get the car ready to race.
Hooker’s crew was on the car, adjusting the setup. Hooker and I were in front of his hauler, drinking coffee, enjoying the morning sun. Beans was back at the house, taking his morning nap.
The 69 car was three haulers down from us, and Dickie was in the hauler with Delores. Best not to know what they were doing.
Light flashed in my peripheral vision. The sort of blinding flash you get when you tip a mirror to the sun. I shielded my eyes and turned to the light and saw that it was Suzanne Huevo swinging her ass down the garage area, the sun reflecting off her diamonds. She was wearing a Huevo Industries shirt, tight designer jeans, and boots with four-inch stiletto heels. A doggie bag hung on her shoulder, and Itsy Poo’s tiny head was stuck up, her black button eyes taking everything in.
“Yow,” Hooker whispered.
I gave him the squinty eye.
“Just looking,” he said. “A guy can look.”
I waved to Suzanne, and she walked